Even Silence is Praise: Quiet your mind and awaken your soul with Christian meditation
Rick Hamlin
W Publishing Group
The Life-Changing Practice of Christian Meditation
My prayer time often reflects my life—busy, scattered, with more to do than hours in the day. I often worry that I’m not covering everything in my conversations with God.
How I must amuse Him!
And how thankful I am that He created people like Rick Hamlin, whose book, Even Silence is Praise: Quiet your mind and awaken your soul with Christian meditation, explains the awesome life-changing practice of Christian meditation.
Hamlin’s style is like a conversation, and I found myself wanting to talk back to him as I read, to share my reactions, to engage in a discussion. His humble approach (how often do authors open their books by confessing their own struggles with the topic?) puts him on the same level as his readers. He’s encouraging, not intimidating. He shares, he doesn’t preach. He asks questions and then answers them with remarkable clarity.
He begins with an explanation of meditation, explaining the rich Christian tradition of the practice that is also known as contemplative prayer. Then he walks you through how to get started, how to choose a good place, how to deal with the distractions from your environment and your mind that might make you think you haven’t been successful at meditating. Simply trying, he writes, is more than enough. “Intention is everything. … To try to pray is to pray. It’s the same with meditation, or with anything that involves giving up and trusting.”
So you follow Hamlin’s advice and add meditation to your routine, carving out that early morning time in a comfortable chair or whatever works for you. You’re feeling good, hearing God in a new way, loving how this special way of praying is enriching your life. Then you’re thrown a curveball—a serious illness, a death, a catastrophe of another sort. And suddenly the peace you enjoyed while meditating eludes you. But don’t stop trying, Hamlin says. “When you need to practice meditation the most is often when it’s the hardest.”
Even Silence is Praise is rich with stories from Hamlin’s own life, with wisdom from contemporary and ancient writers, and with Scripture. Each chapter includes a Meditative Moment, an exercise designed to help you understand and get comfortable with meditating. There’s a symbol he asks you to use as a trigger to put down the book and meditate.
Try it. It works.
Jacquelyn's latest book is Christian Business Almanac: The Ultimate Daily Guide for Kingdom-Driven Entrepreneurs and Leaders.
She is the author of the nonfiction books Simple Facts About Self-Publishing (Second Edition), Words to Work By: 31 devotions for the workplace based on the Book of Proverbs and Finding Joy in the Morning: You can make it through the night as well as the novel Choices (A Joyful Cup Story). With her husband, she is the co-creator of several coloring books for adults and the novelty My Book About series.
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